Augmented Reality (‘AR’) is a technology that superimposes imagery, such as computer-generated imagery, onto a view of the real world displayed in real-time on a display of a computing device, so as to produce a composite view.
In some cases, the superimposed imagery in the composite view should appear to interact with one or more elements of the displayed real-world view. For example, if a displayed real-world view contains a tree, the corresponding composite view may include superimposed imagery of birds which appear to be perching on branches of the tree.
AR and its applications have been researched for decades, but since portable computing devices such as the iPhone® have become widely used, numerous AR software applications (or ‘apps’) for these devices have been developed.
One technical consideration relating to deployment of AR applications is how a portable computing device user obtains the superimposed imagery corresponding to a real-world view. One approach is to apply an identifier to a real-world physical article, which lets the user know that there is superimposed imagery corresponding to a real-world view containing the article. The identifier may simply be a written statement informing the user that the superimposed imagery is available, and how it can be obtained. The identifier may comprise a machine-interpretable code containing information about how the superimposed imagery can be obtained.